


お花見 (O-Hanami)

by calerine



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Canon Compliant, Community: ninoexchange, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7425529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nino wakes up in the early Edo period, the prime suspect is all the dead generals' helmets he's had to wear. But then, he finds that the heir to the domain looks exactly like his boyfriend in 2016, then things get a lot more complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	お花見 (O-Hanami)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [negaii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/negaii/gifts).



> Written for Nino Exchange. お花見 (O-hanami) means cherry-blossom viewing. 
> 
> History notes at the end.

**Prologue**

Nino had never given it much thought, really.

Once, on a long train trip home after dance rehearsals, Aiba had posed it as a hypothetical question (in a series of endless hypothetical questions, as Aiba was wont to do when he’s so pumped he can’t sit still).

“ _Hypothetically_ , what do you think would like trigger time travel? Like if you knock your head and BAM! You’re in the Sengoku period. You know what I mean? _Hypothetically_ speaking,” he’d said, complete with the slightly deranged excitement of an energised bunny and a mad scientist, combined.

In the spirit of the activity, Nino had stolen one piece from the base of Aiba’s _karaage_ castle, and just to be a dick, went “I’m going to tell Johnny-san you have too much time on your hands to hypothesise about nonsense.”

Looking back, that was probably the universe’s equivalent of nudging slyly at Nino’s side, going _eh, just waaaait till you hear what I’ve got planned._

Looking back, Nino kind of wants to kick it in the face.

 

 

**Day 01**

In March, Nino gets tossed back in time, like one of Jun’s unfortunate white shirts caught in a spin cycle with every other colour of Nino’s. As it happens, it isn't a bump on the head or a journey over a wall that sends Nino into the past.

On an unfathomable Thursday, he wakes up the exact same way he's used to; cocooned in those soft, overpriced covers that Jun insists on, and warmed from soft light coming in through the window. Even his toes - bare from escapee socks - are toasty.

Nino stretches, yawning widely and already going through their call-times for that day. They have a VS recording, then Jun has a magazine shoot for his drama. In the evening, Nino has a location shoot down in Wakayama for his corner on _Shiyagare_. At this point, he's in a good mind to let _This Is MJ_ absorb _Ninomiya’s Little Aspirations_ , just so he can stop finding himself in random museums across the country, trying on helmets of dead generals.

Nino flops over to Jun’s side of the bed, lazily imagining him in the kitchen. He's probably already making some of his vile spinach juice while doing squats, or whatever it was he liked to do to in the ‘precious hours of the morning’. But instead of the other side of the bed, Nino finds himself greeted by a face full of tatami, and the beginnings of a sinking feeling at the bottom of his stomach.

Then the room door slides open and Nino has all of a split second to recall that the doors in their apartment most definitely do not _slide_. Someone’s voice calls out _Ninomiya-sama?_ with a reverence that makes even Nino’s spine tingle, and suddenly, it dawns on him that grumpy museum caretakers might have become the least of his worries.

But Nino has never been one for elaborate displays of emotion so he just allows himself a second on the ground, face-first and muttering furiously about pranks going too far.

“Ninomiya-sama?” The voice ventures, cautious almost.

Nino lifts half his face from the floor to meet curious eyes. His throat's so dry that he has to cough before croaking out crossly, “and who are you?”

“Kento, sir. I’ve served you all through the Battle of Osaka? Uhm, can I get you the physician?” He sounds confused, and vaguely a distant part of Nino's brain relates to it.

The Battle of Osaka - Nino's never been super into history but he’s been to Osaka Castle enough times for work to know that it happened at the start of the Tokugawa period. If this is what he thinks it is - hopefully, he won't be expected to do anything ridiculous like stab anyone. Or maybe by then, he’d have worked up enough frustration to do it convincingly.

He pulls himself upright reluctantly, slouching dramatically over his crossed legs. At least it seems like he was someone important.

“Give me a moment,” and Kento waits patiently while Nino, growing increasingly annoyed by the minute, sighs and surveys his frankly over-extravagant room. The navy borders on the tatami symbolising a rank that Nino barely remembers from school trips to a bunch of castles, and the exquisite garments on his back. Then there's the garden his room overlooks, spread out in moss and wisteria like a Tokyo property agent’s wet dream. On one of the walls hangs a kimono. Even with bare slivers of Japanese history lessons bobbing to the surface of his memory, Nino immediately recognises the Tokugawa emblems on in the centre of its back and sleeves - three hollyhock leaves in a circle.

Like any other person in this situation, Nino turns back to Kento, and meets the question in his eyes with an empathetic but wholly understandable _for fuck’s sake!_

*

Let’s review the facts:

  1. The day before Nino woke up in the Edo period, he’d eaten approximately two milk buns, a bowl of _tantanmen_ , 3 eggs and 2 coffees. Not enough for this to be a fever dream.
  2. He hadn’t taken part in any of Aiba’s mad escapades, _though_ he had presented a persuasive case for something about ranking senpai by the amount of New Year money they handed out. Still though, not a fever dream.
  3. He had gamed for approximately 3 hours in total, if you combined everything from the time in the green room, in the company van between locations and just before bed at night. He’s had scarily vivid dreams after 15-hour gaming marathons before, but 3 hours are not nearly enough for this to be one of them.
  4. He had gone on one of those helmet-trying expeditions with the _Shiyagare_ staff and ended up in a little temple somewhere in Gifu prefecture. The curator had been one of those overly enthusiastic history nerds who basically took out every helmet they had and let Nino try them all. _God_ , that was probably it.



In an event Nino actually gets back to 2016, he’ll probably be able to look back on this and laugh.

The irony is not lost on him.

*

Still, Nino’s never been the sort of to stay down.

As the saying goes, when life throws you back almost 400 years, you make lemonade.

Or something like that.

After checking every shelf and crevice for a hidden camera, he quizzes Kento on all the necessary details under the pretense of a pop quiz, even though Nino isn't even sure if they even had pop quizzes in the Edo period. They must have, because Kento takes to it like Nakajima Kento in 2016 takes to being an idol.

Nino asks about his name (Ninomiya Kazunari, good), age (Kento’s concept of age isn't very similar to Nino’s so he leaves it at that), where they are (Odawara), what year it is (something about it being past the Genna era). He is starting to really wish that there had been Google in the Edo period.

Then Kento cocks his head wonderingly, his gaze bright now, and Nino remembers fleetingly how whip-smart 2016 Kento is.

“This might be information you wish to know, but you’re one of the samurai class in this domain.” Kento makes eye contact for a moment before dipping his head back down towards the ground.

And for all of a minute, Nino gapes at him before swallowing around his tongue, with a barely-there “well, if you say so.”

Kento bows, then offers to show Nino the grounds of his own residences as if his samurai wakes up regularly not knowing where he is or how he got here.

*

It’s not much, but it should be enough to get him through.

Nino’s watched enough movies and played enough games to understand this trope and the cliché his life has become. If it was a helmet that had brought him back to fuck-knows-when, it's a helmet that can bring him back to 2016.

And given what he knows, he can pretend to be this Nino well enough. He is an actor by trade after all, toured all of the Edo, Meiji, Showa periods in his thirty-something years. If the Academy Award trophy on his shelf is anything to go by, he is a certified expert at this thing by now. Practise has made him adept at donning the faces and stories of other men, securing the straps of their burdens on his shoulders and the buckles of their weapons on his hips.

With Kento by his side, Nino wanders the halls of his own residence for hours afterwards. It feels like a dream, the textures and colour of this time surreal without the lights of a camera crew and a director telling him how to sit, how to look more contrite while another character yells at him. There is the blush of the cherry blossoms in the gardens, the exact shade of those hanging over the Meguro river in Nakameguro when he used to live there. Spring smells the same in all the ages, it seems; thick with new flowers, fresh earth turned over by the rain and the sweet scent of sakura.

Kento leaves nothing out from his tour, taking Nino to the doors of the servants’ quarters, out into the budding town, past the few merchant stores, other samurai residences, then leading him to the very edge of the castle itself.

There, they stand in its shadows for a while. Running his eyes down the facade of the recently completed castle that is yet untainted by moss and the greasy handprints of elementary school children on excursions, Nino considers the number of expletives Jun would use if he were here.

For ten whole minutes, Kento waits patiently by his side for him to finish.

*

It’s not too long before Nino starts to realise that he must have really fucked up somewhere to have made the universe _this_ keen to torment him.

That evening, he’s about to strip for a bath when someone storms into his room, all while complaining loudly. Still governed by personal boundaries that this person _clearly_ doesn’t share and - as he is learning - his new body’s incredible reflexes, the person nearly gets hit in the face by an empty bowl that Nino sends sailing through the air.

Before he realises what he’s done, the person’s already dodged it. And when Nino looks up at their face, Nino very nearly reaches for another bowl.

“ _Ninooo._ You promised you’d come,” It’s that whine, the exact same pitch and tone that Nino’s had drilled into his brain and sunk into the deepest level of his consciousness at training camps and basically every single day since.

“Aiba-chan?” It’s an actual struggle to keep the disbelief from his voice. This Aiba is tanner than the one that Nino knows, complete with a _chonmage_ that is slipping sideways. But it’s still Aiba, _Nino’s_ Aiba-chan. Now that he's here, Nino could pretend that they were doing a period photo-shoot of some kind, and Aiba’s gotten bored of his manga or something.

Aiba shuts the door behind him with great aplomb. Nino catches a flash of half of Kento’s surprised face before it’s rudely covered up by the door. The swords on Aiba’s hip clack noisily as he throws himself onto his belly.

“I waited for you until sunset, you _said_ you would turn up this time. Sho-kun even laid out your share, and yet!” He stabs an accusatory finger at Nino’s empty dinner bowls as if they’ve personally offended him. “What is your excuse this time?”

Nino swallows around a dry throat, his heart hammering in his ribs, cold sweat prickling. If there were anyone who would see through his guise, it would be Aiba.

“Kento was just bringing me around; we got carried away with the - uhm - work,” he gestured vaguely, feeling quite lame. Really, the extent of work he’s done that day was stopping every few streets to get pebbles out of his shoes as well as master the swagger of his samurai alter ego.

Then suddenly, all the indignance drains from Aiba’s posture. He pulls himself to his knees, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward curiously just like Nino’s Aiba used to, mostly after the first few Ni No Arashi corners of their early years when he’d become suspicious of just about everything on set.

“Have you been out in the sun too long with Satoshi again?” He hums wonderingly, “something has changed, what is it -” Then his eyes widen dramatically, and he’s slapping his hands over his mouth with a small gasp that makes Nino’s heart drop. “Which Nino are you? When did you come from?”

This gaping thing is really becoming a bad habit because Aiba reaches over to hinge his jaw, teasing but gentle. Nino’s heart kicks; they must be close in this reality too.

“You - I - you mean this happens regularly? So - it wasn’t the helmet after all?”

At that, Aiba shrugs, fiddling with the hem of his _obi_ absently. “Since we were children. Sometimes you are - _he is -_ gone for a few hours, sometimes it is a week or two - we never really know. But there are another four of him at least. 1932’s Nino has been back twice,” He darts a look at Nino, and Nino recognises it instantly. It’s the same thrill Aiba wears when he’s suddenly in possession of 15-year-old eggs. There's probably going to be trouble.

Aiba chews on his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Wait, what do you mean helmet? You mean it doesn’t happen to you - _this_ you?”

“Uhm, I had to wear one of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s helmets for something, and I thought that was what brought me here.” Even in this situation, that sounds a little silly, but all Aiba does is make a sound like it's perfectly reasonable. “There’s always a first time for everything, right?”

For a moment, Aiba considers this, and then plucking out a thread-bound book from his sleeve, he retrieves a grindstone from one of the drawers to prepare some ink. By candlelight, he crowds into Nino’s space, eager for stories about 2016, about him, _this_ Nino out of all the Ninos he’s ever met.

They fall asleep side-by-side, Aiba in the extra futon that he pulled from Nino's cupboard and laid out like he'd done it a million times.

In the middle of the night, Nino wakes to the moon through the open doors casting clear light on them, Aiba’s arm around his torso and the covers twisted around their legs. In the surreal stillness, Nino’s eyes fall upon Aiba’s arms that had been hidden by his kimono sleeves. It takes him a moment to realise what he's looking at; mottled skin wrapping around Aiba's forearms, like a child cutting a birthday cake with unsteady hands.

A quiet, sympathetic cry escapes on an exhale.

Just last week, they had curled on a couch in the NTV green room before _Shiyagare_ filming, Aiba's chin resting on Nino's shoulder as he fought the final boss. But then, they are here too, in this reality, as children, as young men fighting historical wars, and sufferings costs that Nino cannot even begin to fathom.

Afterwards, it takes him a long time to fall back asleep. He pulls the covers over them, listens to Aiba's breathing above the cries of cicadas. In his sleep, Aiba burrows deeper into Nino's arms, mumbling about something or other.

When Nino finally falls back asleep, he dreams of phantom pain and Aiba’s familiar, honest eyes in the flickering candlelight when he said _since we were children._

 

 

**Day 02**

It’s begun; Nino’s started to miss home.

To be fair, Nino’s just not very good at being away. It didn’t take him very long when he was filming _Letters from Iwo Jima_ in California either. At least there he could cast aside thoughts of a very expensive phone bill and call one of the other members, listen to Ohno hum and hmm his way through a 20 minute call because Nino caught him too early in the morning when he was still in bed and trying to fall back asleep, or five minute conversations with Sho while he was preparing for News Zero. Sho always called back later in the day when he was done and on the way home, but by then Nino was wanted on set.

Here though, it’s a weird combination of the familiar and the strange. Everything looks like Nino might have seen somewhere, in some movie or history book or on a movie set. There’s Aiba and Kento who look exactly like their modern selves, and hints of an Ohno, Sho, and Jun that Nino has not met.

But then, there is everything else. No screens, no smartphones, laptops or buzzing in his pocket. None of the crowds of Shinjuku, the bright lights, neon signs and drunken salarymen stumbling their uneven way home.

Even his body is intimate and foreign at once. Every time Kento helps him to change, Nino has to get used to the shock of it again, the new scars on familiar angles; shiny skin carving jagged lines across his skinny shoulders, and joints that seemed to move differently, like they’d been broken and not set right.

Yesterday, Nino had run his fingers down those marks, like he was wandering across the body of a new lover. He'd wondered about the life of this Nino, the wars he’d been in, the bloodshed sunk deep into his veins. But all Kento had done was avert his eyes respectfully, and in a gentle voice told Nino that those were the scars that helped unite Japan.

*

He is summoned in the morning.

Kento hurries in with the news while Nino is toying with a slice of pickled radish, poking holes in it with his chopsticks and thinking deep thoughts about how terrible outhouses smell.

“You have been summoned,” he says, out of breath even though Nino knows it’s not that far from the castle. But he lets it slide; they all have their vices.

“What? By whom?” Nino questions around a mouthful of radish, which admittedly makes him sound very much less intimidating than he was trying for.

“By the heir of Odawara, Matsumoto Jun,” and Nino very nearly chokes to death in the Edo period.

*

It turns out this Matsumoto Jun is quite like the one Nino is used to waking up to, and then - as most things are here - not really either.

Once Nino sets eyes on him, lifting his head from a bow, his breath catches deep in his throat. This Jun is tall too, dark-haired and broad-shouldered with strong features and a gravitas that would stand out in a crowd. Maybe it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. But now that Nino has found Jun in this time, with features that he has mapped out in the dark now carrying such a foreign formality, Nino’s heart _yearns._

They are in one of the rooms in the castle keep. Nino doesn’t know which, except that it made Kento boggle a little when they were led here. It must be significant somehow.

Matsumoto - Jun? Matsujun? MJ? Nino’s not quite sure what to call the past version of his current boyfriend in the future in his inner monologue, to be quite honest - nods at Nino gravely. His jet black kimono further accents this, the solemnity and the stateliness of this room - Matsumoto cross-legged in the front, then Nino on his knees in the middle of the large, empty space that feels increasingly like it should be filled up with more people.

A servant comes in bearing tea and sweets, and as she places them in front of them both, Matsumoto frowns and says, “I hear you stood Aiba-chan and Sho-kun up again?"

“News -” _sure travels fast_ , Nino almost says before he stops himself. This is not his Jun. “Yes, uhm. I was busy surveying the town yesterday and it slipped my mind.”

“You are aware that is not your job, yes? Aah, Ninomiya, nosy as always.” Matsumoto’s brows knot, and he taps his chin with a thoughtful finger.

Just when Nino starts to wonder if he’s being teased, Matsumoto’s face cracks into a smile.

“I jest,” he relents, chuckling at the look on Nino’s face. “Forgive me for taking pleasure in such childish ribbing. It’s just, the matters of the domain -” He breaks off on a sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It is only now that Nino notices the lines on his face that hint at sleepless nights. He recognises them, the dark circles around his eyes that haunt Jun when he’s been up all month planning for concerts. It makes Nino want to tell him off, then make him tea and insult bad movies with him until all that stress falls away.

So he settles for the next best thing. After all, Nino’s never been one to let hierarchy get in the way, much less when it is with this person.

“Would you like me to accompany you on a walk? The cherry blossoms are very beautiful in bloom,” Nino offers, even though yesterday he’d already seen enough of them for a lifetime. They’re all the same anyway, always getting into your hair and when the wind blows right, slapping you in your face. But Jun’s always liked them.

Matsumoto gazes wistfully out of the open doors. “So I have heard,” he says, a faint smile playing on his lips. “This morning, I recalled the days we spent in the palace grounds when I was first sent here, you and I and Aiba-chan, and Aiba-chan was always ill.” He laughs. “They prepared me for grief when I left Matsumoto, but what I was not prepared for was the joy we shared -"

“- When we were young,” they say at the same time, thoughts of Aiba’s scars and his own tugging the words from the tip of Nino’s tongue.

But Matsumoto doesn’t even look surprised, just regretful as he stares down at the hem of his kimono. He seems like a million miles away, probably already thinking about wrangling finances and samurai or whatever it is that heirs are in charge of. They must have had this conversation a million times before. Nino wonders if Matsumoto knows too, about this time’s Nino’s propensity for time-travel.

A chilly breeze sweeps into the room and Nino hears the distant sound of leaves swirling around in the wind, scraping along the dirt grounds at the foot of the keep.

Then:

“I’m sure your work will wait. I won’t tell our lord if you don’t,” Nino lets himself grin, heart going to overdrive when Matsumoto’s face mirrors his smile, like clouds parting on an overcast day.

Distinctly, Nino feels a little too much like being a teenager nursing a stupid crush.

*

Nino isn’t sure what the job scope of samurais is, but this is pretty great.

It feels like a little date, as if they went for a trip overseas. For hours, they stroll around the tiny town, Matsumoto dressed in a commoner’s kimono and Nino in his samurai garb, his swords at his hip.

After a while, Nino finds himself relaxing, growing more and more loose-tongued in Matsumoto’s presence. If this were his Jun, he would probably appreciate how candid they can be here. Nino would crack a joke about how rare it is, to spot a wild Matsumoto Jun in its natural habitat, and Jun would elbow him even though he would be taking Nino's hand in the very next moment.

Outside the castle, Matsumoto’s relief is palpable. At least here, he is away from where his papers sit in piled scrolls, and his father’s ministers who ply him for attention, whether it is about decisions to be made about inter-domain relations or taxes. At least this is what Matsumoto tells him, between anecdotes about all the things he saw in Edo a few months ago; the new toys that the Dutch brought in this time, new _kimono_ trends and the news from other lords from the rest of Japan.

The people clearly respect him, bowing as soon as they see Nino, and asking after the health of his father. An _obaasan_ tells Matsumoto to take care of himself, the deep lines of her smile like the branches of a forest. She presses a strawberry _daifuku_ each into Nino and Matsumoto's hands insisting until Matsumoto relents, their interactions easy like they've done this a thousand times before.

At the textile dyer’s, Matsumoto marvels at the bright red colours of a freshly completed batch, asking if he can touch it before he does. He asks about the man's children while his hands run down gold thread. Before they leave, the dyer produces a small sketch of a new design from his sleeve, unfolding the thin paper to reveal drawings of bush warblers in flight. Matsumoto immediately orders a new kimono, and Nino watches him stand patiently as the man takes his measurements.

"Do you require a new kimono too?" Matsumoto offers. "You're always wearing this one," he teases and Nino could swear Jun has said the exact same thing to him once before.

And he, giddy with this memory, responds in the same way. "You like me like this."

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, his stomach drops. But the dyer merely laughs and defends Nino's habits as proof that his _kimonos_ can last a lifetime. A flash of confusion leaps across Matsumoto's face before he's turning back to the dyer to share the joke. Nino's heartbeat is loud in his ears.

Back on the street, they fall into an awkward silence, and Nino's about to do _something_ \- apologise or make a joke or point out the art on some paper windmills - to divert attention from the slip of his tongue.

But all of a sudden, a voice calls out from behind them. “Matsumoto-sama, Nino!” And Nino whirls around to find Sho, _Sakurai Sho._

It's about time.

“Sho-kun?” Nino ventures, the same time Matsumoto strides over to greet him. Ducking out from under _noren_ , Aiba rushes out, grinning like his face is about to fall off, while Ohno - _Ohno! -_ follows at a more sedate pace.

“Aiba-chan said he thought he saw you two from the window,” Sho bows. “Matsumoto-sama."

“Do not stand on ceremony with me, Sho-kun, please.” Matsumoto clasps Sho on his shoulder, his hand staying there. “Looks like you get to make it up to Aiba-chan and Sho-kun now,” he tells Nino, meeting his eyes with a tentative smile.

They end up having dinner with them. Aiba complains about Nino standing them up until he rolls his eyes and tells him to shut up. It turns out Ohno is a monk in this time, living in the shrine on the outskirts of the town, and Sho is a merchant who has just moved into Odawara from the countryside.

“If not for the fact that Aiba-chan took me under his wing,” Sho confesses, and it’s meant to be grateful and serious, but he’s hiccupping comically from all the shochu.

Aiba pats his back fondly, not minding even when Sho sways gently into him. On Nino’s other side, Ohno has fallen asleep despite not drinking a single drop. Everyone else is slightly different in this time, but it seemed like Ohno is exactly the same, apart from the general monk-ness and the lack of hair.

Quietly, Matsumoto calls for the check.

On the way back to the castle, Matsumoto can’t stop grinning, humming some cheery tune or another under his breath.

Nino fixes him with a look. “I told you this was a good idea,” he can’t resist teasing, made relaxed enough by dinner to forget about his slip-up just now. He nudges Matsumoto’s side with his elbow.

“Oh, shut up, Ninomiya,” Matsumoto says, but he’s laughing anyway and shoving Nino back in response.

 

 

 

**Day 03**

After tossing and turning for hours, Nino catches Matsumoto at the castle’s edges hours before first light. He stands overlooking the town, hands clutched behind his back, stately almost.

He only nods in acknowledgement when Nino joins him at his side. At their feet, the people of Odawara slumber.

“Do you ever miss your family?” Nino asks after a while. It catches Matsumoto off guard, but he looks thoughtful for a moment before he shakes his head.

“I do not remember enough of them. You and I, we were born in between eras. Much has changed.” He lifts his eyes towards the night sky, and Nino’s eyes struggle to differentiate between the inky black of Matsumoto’s robes and the universe above him. These people don’t even know about space travel yet.

They stand there for a few more long moments as the sky lightens in the distance and slowly illuminates the town before them. The haphazard grids of samurai residences, stores and houses of so many people that will live, grow old and pass away. To Nino, they are fleeting but to them, to Matsumoto who has devoted his life to serving them, this is _their_ reality. They don’t know Odawara as Nino does, a thriving city with preserved houses and tourists finding their way around with maps on their smartphones.

Nino lets out a breath, exhaling until it whistles out through his teeth.

Then, Matsumoto’s lips twist into something wistful, letting out a small sigh.

“No, I do not think of it as loss,” he levels a steady look at Nino that _Nino’s Jun_ has done a thousand times before, but never over something like this. “Instead, what is gain but a series of losses and victories eventually tipping into your favour, is it not?”

Nino is really proud of himself when he sighs and says, “Spoken like a true heir. You just thought of that, didn’t you?” instead of _you’re so much like my Matsujun, sometimes it almost feels like he’s here._ His words make joy spring to Matsumoto’s face for a moment. But Nino catches that split second of it - a proud glimmer across Matsumoto’s eyes, the self-congratulatory tilt of his lips - and his hand twitches in a phantom desire to take Matsumoto’s.

Except this time even Nino isn’t sure if it’s because he resembles Jun, or because this Matsumoto feels like the Jun Nino gets to see every night before bed. Bleary-eyed with the day, but always softer in the light of his bedside lamp, glasses slipping off the tip of his nose and onto his paperback, then in the darkness afterwards, murmuring conversation to Nino until he falls asleep.

*

That Jun stays with Nino the entire day, even after he has napped briefly in Aiba’s room and has woken up to the sun, huge and full and warm on his face.

By then, it’s noon and Aiba is outside, practising archery in the garden. Sideways, Nino watches him from the safety of Aiba’s futon, how he has positioned himself behind a small pile of rocks, aiming for the heart of a straw man across the way from him. For every shot, he crouches down, belly on the sandy ground, dodging from an imaginary enemy. He’s tied up his sleeves with a _tasuki_ , a length of fabric around each armpit so they don’t get in the way. Like this, Nino can’t help being drawn to the marks on his arms, snaking around his skin like someone had held his body to the light and carved in riverbeds of a new world.

It’s quiet around them, albeit the sparrows that land on the rickety fence between Aiba’s compound and the next, hopping up and down, chirping merrily. A tabby cat lazes in one of the trees, watching Aiba, watching the sparrows, her brown tail sweeping downwards.

Nino almost falls asleep then, tucking his cold fingers under him while his mind conjures up the sight of Matsumoto again. This morning in the dim blueness of this morning, how small his figure had looked backgrounded by the distant mountains.

Eventually, forced out by boredom and the spiralling vortex of his own mind, Nino puts the kettle on over the glowing embers of a fire, shifting to the _engawa_ and taking Aiba’s quilt with him. In that moment, Aiba only waves from the ground, before he’s up and taking aim again.

As soon as he runs out of arrows in his quiver, he plucks them out of the straw man with his fist, repositions the straw man, himself, and then starts all over.

“I think I love him,” Nino says without really thinking. Well, that’s not true. He hasn't _stopped_ thinking, about the conversation at the boundaries of the castle keep, Jun's stubborn determination in the set of his jaw, and his foolhardy pride.

Aiba, with sweat dripping from his chin and soaking through the front of his kimono, doesn’t miss a beat, firing two arrows off at once. Both get the straw man straight between its eyes. With a face full of delight and surprise, he looks at Nino, gesturing at the trembling arrows as if to say _did you see what I just did?_

Nino gives him a thumbs-up, and Aiba makes a confused face for all of a second before he figures out how to return one.

The kettle is almost overflowing when Nino takes it off the heat. He pours tea out for the both of them, watching when steam curls around Aiba’s closed eyes. His hands nearly engulf the cup. Nino runs his eyes down Aiba’s scars, keeps the question on his lips for later.

“‘Love’ is a strong word, don’t you think?” Aiba says now, cocking his head briefly at Nino before he’s looking out at the garden again, at the tattered straw man face down on the ground, with its stomach poured out. The tabby cat has gone now, leapt off the wall some time ago when the sparrows took flight.

Nino makes a sound, neither affirming nor disagreeing, taking another sipping and letting the bitter tea drown out his incessant thoughts.

“Would you stay then, if you had a choice?” Aiba wipes his face with the back of his hand, flicking droplets everywhere and chuckling when Nino makes a disgusted face.

“I don’t know,” he says in a rushing exhale. The words twist in his gut, like worms waiting for an out, tearing him up from the inside. His gaze drops to his hands - not his, _this_ Nino’s - and then, “he reminds me so much of my Jun-kun, but here he’s alone.”

Aiba stiffens. “He is not alone." For the first time, he sounds affronted.

“I don’t mean it like that,” Nino corrects, growing frustrated with his inability to say what he means. If only he could find the right words, get even that much closer to his true intent than this, but then again this entire situation seems to have taken a knife to his heart and split it right open.

Aiba looks apologetic when he says, “I know. Honestly, I do not know what took place between Nino and him, but it is taking some time to settle.” At Nino’s surprised expression, he adds, “they have been weird for days, and I know it is not my place to say anything but I just want the both of them to be happy, with or without each other."

He makes an upset sound. “And I worry, _of course_ I worry. They think I do not know, but I have known for _so long_ now. It is one of those things, right? It festers in your heart; secrets are like larvae. Before you know it, it will be spring and they will burst from your mouth like butterflies. _Whether_ you like it or not.” Aiba buries his head in his hands, letting out a gust of a sigh.

“You should tell them,” Nino suggests gently, torn between surprise and the tangle of his own desires. He has never seen Aiba like this.

When Aiba lifts his face from his hands, he looks downright miserable. “But you get it, do you not?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Though I wouldn’t have described the bursting out bit as butterflies because I’m pretty sure it’ll be much more gory than that.” That makes Aiba giggle at least. This way, he looks so much like the Aiba that Nino is used to, the one who makes his own beer snacks out of daikon slices and demonstrates it on national TV.

Then, Aiba fixes Nino with an astute look, narrowing his eyes. “Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t stay though.”

“Thanks for stating the obvious, genius.” Nino flicks a piece of dirt at Aiba, catching him in the middle of his forehead and making him yelp.

Aiba rubs his head ruefully. “But - if you love him - “

“I still can’t.” Nino sighs, running his thumb across the grains of the wood repeatedly until all he feels are grooves and uneven cracks.

“And my Nino might not be in love with your Jun-kun either.” Aiba’s forehead is red from his rubbing, and he looks so forlorn Nino wants to laugh.

Instead, he hums absently, ready to give up this whole love-me-love-me-not business. It’s only been three days after all. Eventually, he will return to 2016 where his own Jun will be waiting, without his robes, without his duties to his people or his memories from the wars. Something catches in Nino’s chest, but he holds his breath, doesn’t let it out.

Aiba looks thoughtful for all of a minute before he throws himself onto the _engawa_ , sprawling out, belly down, and pressing his cheek to the sun-warmed wood with a blissful smile on his face. Then, he flops over.

“Tell me about your Aiba-chan,” he demands, upside-down. A mischievous grin dances on his lips, and at least there is this slice of normality.

“Would you believe me if I told you that he gets paid to play with puppies?” Nino relents after a moment.

Aiba shoots up with a jolt. “What?” He asks, eyes widening. “Does he reside in the Emperor’s courts? Or - does your lord favour him _so much_?”

Nino laughs, trying to find the best way to explain the entertainment industry to someone who hasn't even heard about television. Whatever it was curls up slowly in between his ribs, seeking solace in the forgotten places of his heart.

*

That night, Nino finds himself drinking sake with the heir of Odawara.

They are in Nino’s compound, sat cross-legged on the _engawa_ adjacent to Nino’s room while the night air hangs heavy with the heady sweet scent of flowers in bloom. It’s cooler at least, compared to the humid afternoon downpour that never seemed like it would end.

Early evening, Matsumoto had invited himself over, accompanied by a servant who had been struggling under the weight of the domain’s first brew of the year. Though when Nino thinks about it, technically Matsumoto could go anywhere in Odawara and it wouldn't be considered 'inviting himself over'.

“Come,” Matsumoto had boomed at the doorway of the residence, looking very much like the archetype of an heir when he was backlit against the sunlight coming through the door. Then he’d looked past all the other samurai, straight at Nino. “Drink with me to the health of Odawara.”

Then, with the sun setting in the distance, they started in Nino’s room. By the time the temple bell struck for prayer, they had migrated out onto the _engawa_. The deep reverberations had tolled out deafeningly, until all they could do was grasp at the end of their thoughts and let the sound wash over them _._

There are some things about the world that doesn’t surprise Nino, and there are other things that do. This is one of them: Matsumoto swaying forward, his tone conspiring and a flush high on his cheeks. Nino fights the urge to reach out to touch. Overheard, the sky is crammed full of stars; so bright in their totality that Nino almost shields his eyes from their light.

“You are not Kazunari, are you? Not the one who is meant for this time, at least.” The words wrap clumsily around Matsumoto's tongue and slip out between them.

Panic rises in Nino’s chest, but Matsumoto is relaxed, reclining against thin wooden frames of the house, legs spread out loosely before him. Whenever he shifts, the wood creaks quietly.

“No,” Nino answers truthfully. If Matsumoto had wanted him taken away, he would have done any time before now. Why wait until Nino has drunk his fill of the best sake in the domain, or until Matsumoto is loose-lipped and so nearly asleep.

Matsumoto nods in understanding. “You are so much like him I thought I was simply intoxicated."

Nino chuckles, the liquor making him bold. “With love?”

Matsumoto allows himself a laugh, belly-deep and booming. It’s so much like Jun that Nino has to brace himself. All around them, lanterns sway in the breeze, illuminating what's left of the sakura on the trees, light falling on those pink petals on the ground, soaked through by the afternoon's storm.

When their mirth peters out, Matsumoto studies Nino through half-lidded eyes. By candlelight, Nino can almost imagine they are merely winding down from a long week on the veranda of their apartment, sharing a bottle of wine and trading kisses while Tokyo lets out a breath.

“Tell me,” Matsumoto requests, smiling lopsidedly, his movements turned sloppier with the sharp sake. “Are we happy in your time?”

“Yes,” Nino says immediately. He doesn't need to consider this, not after the years it took for them to finally drift together, like two planets in constant orbit finally finding an eclipse. The perpetual dinners and barely-awake silences over too-early coffees until one day, Jun got tired of their waiting game and tugged Nino close by the angle of his elbow over an unsaved game of _Bioware._

Nino breathes in the smell of fresh earth and wet wood. Cicadas call in the dark. “Sometimes you’re a real dick, but then again I am too.

“What do you mean by ‘dick’?” Matsumoto looks genuinely puzzled and Nino almost bursts out laughing, but he manages to suppress it into a snort.

“Someone who is vexing and stupid.”

Matsumoto makes a slurred _aaah_ sound, nodding slowly, understanding dawning. “Every man has the potential to be a dick.”

“Wise words, m’lord,” Nino teases, moving to pour him more sake even though he waves him away vaguely.

Nino downs another cupful, and the liquid burns like molten lava all the way down. He’s feeling it now, the world turned fuzzy and soft around the edges; this time, its rules, spoken and unspoken. Nino is confounded by them all.

“Was it what I said at the dyer's yesterday?” He asks, shifting to lean against the doors next to Matsumoto. From over the fence drifts the sound of other samurai talking in low voices, their murmuring interspersed with laughter. They must have forgotten their lord's son is here, just an arrow's flight away.

Matsumoto considers this, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand until it makes squeaky sounds. “I started to suspect then,” he settles on carefully, ever the diplomat. “But you see, we - not you and me, me and my time's Kazunari. We are men who have grown up with war on all sides. We move more with fists, less with words. That is not to say we cannot, it is just that we have grown so used to not saying much that we have become complacent. But when _you_ speak, you do it like someone who could pluck poetry from the air and bind the words to paper.”

It's possibly the most romantic thing Nino's ever had said to him, aside from his own Jun who when he is drunk, always insists on telling Nino how funny he is. “The Matsumoto during my time is not very good with words either,” he offers, trying to comfort.

“Is he not? It must run in the lineage then,” Matsumoto grins, downing another mouthful of drink and showing no sign that it burns.

Nino doesn’t move away when Matsumoto scoots closer. Their shoulders touch, then some of Matsumoto's weight leans on Nino, and he blames the alcohol for the urge to get closer still.

“Are you going to tell him then, when he returns?” Nino takes their cups and slips them back into the room through a crack in the open doors. They have had enough for a while now.

Matsumoto makes a face that is reluctant and determined at the same time. “When he returns… I shall have to drum up my courage before then. Let us hope it is not soon because I am not ready.” Then he sinks bodily to the ground with a groan, sliding down the side of Nino’s body to rest his palms on his abdomen with his legs dangling off the sides of the _engawa_. “The matters of the heart are ever more complex than the matters of the state, are they not?”

Nino grins wryly at the stars, finding the North Star and tracing a path to reach its siblings. “That’s a pretty good line, you should write it down.”

That night, he goes to bed thinking about that Jun - his Jun and this Jun - in his bed again, in the kitchen making dinner, then hung-over and dozing off next to him in the company van. In his dreams, there is Matsumoto, his face pensive in the firelight as he talked about love as if he were a child learning a new tongue.

 

 

**Day 04**

Nino wakes up in a cocoon of his own making.

It takes him a moment to realise that he is not in a futon, but in a bed with a fort of pillows and a 3DS on the bedside table next to his head.

From the open door, the sound of the morning news drifts in in snatches between someone using the pulse mode on a blender. After the near constant silence of Odawara, this is almost deafening.

For a moment, Nino stares at the ceiling, stunned with the reality of his time, the singing birds outside, Jun swearing in the kitchen, and the ratty material of his t-shirt on his skin.

Odawara is fading fast.

“Matsujun! _MATSUJUN_!” Nino yells over the noise of the blender, already feeling very much like he’s back in the 21st century. The blender stops between pulses. “You won’t fucking believe what just happened.”

When Jun looks up to see Nino in the doorway of the kitchen, he becomes wide-eyed and hopeful.

“Oh my god, please, _please_ tell me you know what emojis are.”

 

 

  
**Epilogue**

Nino is in the company van on the way to Nino-san filming when his phone buzzes. Then, before he can get it out of his pocket, it buzzes again, and again, and again.

When Nino finally gets it out, he’s hardly surprised that it’s Aiba.

 

 

> **2016-3-25, 2:37:24 PM**
> 
> **From: Aiba Masaki** <masakidotcom@softbank.co.jp>
> 
> TELL ME EVERYTHING!!!!!! EDO-NINO TOLD ME THERE WAS A ME WAS THERE A ME
> 
>  
> 
> **2016-3-25, 2:37:59 PM**
> 
> **From: Aiba Masaki** <masakidotcom@softbank.co.jp>
> 
> WAS THERE A MATSUJUN DID YOU KISS HIS FACE
> 
>  
> 
> **2016-3-25, 2:38:05 PM**
> 
> **From: Aiba Masaki** <[masakidotcom@softbank.co.jp](mailto:masakidotcom@softbank.co.jp)>
> 
> TELL ME EVERYTHINGGGGGGGGG

 

Some things truly never change, and in some ways, Nino is thankful for that.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Something that didn't make it into the story: In the audience chambers in Nijo Castle, there are hidden rooms where samurais stayed while the shogun met daimyos. I imagined Aiba's one of the samurais who was in charge of doing that. He was probably very good at it after a while.
> 
>    
>  **History notes:**
> 
> I’m not sure who’s interested enough to read this but I thought I should address the bits that I left accurate in the fic, and those that I took liberties with. 
> 
> Firstly, and in a nutshell, the Edo period is essentially the start of modernisation in Japan. Because it came after a long period of civil war and turmoil in the Sengoku period that lasted for a few hundred years. The Tokugawa period followed after with historians also differing on the exact year because some start counting from 1600 (the Battle of Sekigahara) or 1603 when Tokugawa Ieyasu was sworn in as the shogun. (Also Tokugawa Ieyasu was not the ruler of all of Japan until 1615 when Osaka Castle fell.) But we can all agree that it lasted till 1868 which as you can see was over 200 years of pretty much sustained peace in Japan. 
> 
> What is interesting is the political system that was in place during this time: the bakuhan system which grew from the Sengoku feudal system. (Note, I’m leaving out an incredible amount of details here.) “Baku” is taken from Bakufu which means “military government”, or the shogunate. “Han” denotes “domain” so in this system, different lords (or daimyo) were in charge of their own domains and the shogun (or his government body, the bakufu) was in charge of the whole of Japan. Here is where Matsujun the heir to the Odawara seat comes in. 
> 
> Odawara was a domain given to a fudai lord which means a lord that fought on Tokugawa’s side during Sekigahara. (Who fought on which side during that battle stayed v v important throughout the entire 200+ years tbh, like they didn’t get old feuds die for sure. And to start with, when Tokugawa Ieyasu came into power, he made sure to allocate the domains to make it v hard for an uprising to take place - among other things.) 
> 
> For a long time (I don’t actually know how long, but it was a LONG time), there had been the practice of taking and sending political hostages to allied domains as a way to tell them “heyo here’s one of my children so you know we’re not going to invade you”. This is what happened to Matsujun, I imagine he was a child from the Matsumoto domain though I have not done much research in that direction so don’t quote me on this. I am under the impression that some of these children grew up perfectly happy in their adopted domains and eventually shifted alliances as they grew older, which is what I pictured for our MJ.
> 
> Also Matsumoto castle which is in the old Matsumoto domain wasn’t actually built or owned by the Matsumoto family. So, sorry about that.
> 
> A note on names: during the early Tokugawa period, commoners didn’t have surnames. And all the samurai who belonged to a clan had the same surname so I very quickly learnt that it would have been near impossible to have all five of them meet. (And Ohno and Sho would definitely not have had surnames.) But we’ll just pretend that doesn’t exist! Also wikipedia tells me that samurai changed their names a lot depending on their alliances at any given time, which is something I thought was pretty cool.
> 
> Okay, I should shut up now. More information can be found on Wikipedia or any of these books or articles:
> 
> *Hall, John Whitney. “The Castle Town and Japan’s Modern Urbanization.” _Far Eastern_  
>  Quarterly 15, no. 1 (1955): pp. 37-56. 
> 
> Jansen, Marius B. _The Making of Modern Japan._ Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
> 
> *Moriya, Katsuhisa. “Urban Networks and Information Networks.” In _Tokugawa Japan: the Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan_ , edited by Conrad D. Totman, Nakane Chie, Oishi Shinzaburō, 97-123. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2002. 
> 
> *Nakai, Nobuhiko, and James L. McClain. “Commercial change and urban growth in early modern Japan.” In _The Cambridge History of Modern Japan_ , edited by John Whitney Hall and James L. McClain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 
> 
> *Vaporis, Constantine Nomikos. “Lordly Pageantry: The Daimyo Procession and Political Authority.” In _Japan Review_ 17 (2005): pp. 3-54.
> 
> *I have soft copies of these and am happy to email any or all over to you if you'd like!


End file.
